My Soul Can Reach
by JubileeKnight
Summary: They were never what they had been before. The Friends of Narnia live their faith in ways as different from one another as they are themselves. Chapter Eight: Jill
1. Digory

My Soul Can Reach

Chapter One: Digory

"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the Ends of Being and ideal Grace."

~ _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ , XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When Digory Kirke was a young man, he traveled. He visited India where his father had served in the army. The sun tanned his face and lightened his hair, and the heat left him constantly parched, even though the air was heavy with moisture. Digory thought of being lost in a heart of a flame that burned without destroying and was glad for it. He climbed peaks to look down on eagle eyries and strained to draw in too thin air and told his baffled companions that he'd missed the feeling. He studied Shakespeare at Oxford and Plato in Athens and the _Nyayasutras_ in Calcutta.

When he was a little older, but not old, or even quite middle-aged, he played cards on his stomach in trenches of earth with a rifle alongside him and listened to stories of 'going over the wall' with fellow soldiers whose eyes testified that they had only just begun to learn of grief. Digory thought of those who sought destruction and found it and of the hard choice of going forward when none back home would ever know the truth of what was sacrificed and what was saved, and warmed himself at a golden fire that no one else could see.

Before the war, Digory studied. After the war, he taught of discovering truth outside of Plato's cave and the necessity of not allowing assumptions to overrule experience or perception to blind one to reality. "'There are more things in heaven and earth,' Richard," he told a favorite student, "than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"


	2. Polly

My Soul Can Reach

Chapter Two: Polly

"I love thee to the level of everyday's  
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light"

~ _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ , XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

London-born Polly Plummer loved adventure. Her parents attributed it partly to the books she read and partly to 'that Kirke boy' with whom she had become such fast friends when he lived down the row. Despite the description, Mr. and Mrs. Plummer were fond of Digory and they agreed to visits to the old house in the country and correspondence from Greece and India and Italy with rather knowing smiles.

Polly studied French and German and hoped to travel herself one day. Money wasn't quite so plentiful with the Plummers as the Kirkes, and while Digory would have gladly had her along - 'Just like old times.' – and not cared for the raised eyebrows, Polly's parents would certainly have objected. Polly joined the Red Cross instead, devoured Digory's letters and wrote back about the training at Tredegar House and how the best things required work.

When the war came, Polly got to travel at last, although she saw little of Paris outside of the hospital walls. Adventure came to her in the form of weary young men with bleak eyes and without limbs, filled with stories they couldn't tell. Polly who had known a world wiped clear of life, recognized the bleakness, and reminded herself that worlds were born as well as destroyed. Sometimes she told them that. Some of them believed it.

 _Grief is great,_ she wrote to Digory by the light of a candle-lantern, remembering now. The tiny flame put her in mind of a greater one and she added. _The home fires are still burning._

When Polly began coughing too hard, she was sent back to Colney Hatch to rest. She was the first from home to become ill, but Mr. Plummer was the first to pass away. After she recovered and the visitors left, Polly sat with her mother until the sun came up, and then returned to the hospital. There were fewer nurses than there had been before.

"'Grief is great,'" she said, when Digory came back from the front with the familiar empty eyes.

They filled with fire, and he nodded, not needing to be told what she'd told the others. "But-"

 _Grief is great,_ she thought when the second war began. _But He is good._


	3. Edmund

My Soul Can Reach

Chapter Three: Edmund

"I love thee freely, as men strive for Right"

~ _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ , XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Edmund Pevensie loved books. He loved _order_ , and books were far more orderly than people. They gave one facts and information. They explained.

(Books, Susan had been known to sigh, did not love Edmund. They always ended up tattered and torn and smudged and nearly incomprehensible to anyone else due to the chicken scratch scribbled all around the margins and occasionally between the lines on a page.)

Books were a good study because one could come back to them day by day and find the same information, look at it with new eyes, swallow it and digest it and come to understand the meaning behind it. He started reading law books within a few weeks of his coronation and magicians' texts within the year because there was magic and there was Deep Magic and the first pardoned traitor in an age needed to know not just why-that much he was certain of: who and why and nothing else-but _how_.

(The librarian at Cair Paravel loved his kings and queens, but he did not always like Edmund Pevensie.)

Eventually, Edmund became known for reading people the same way he read books: when mercy would be received and cherished and bring forth fruit and when it would be mocked and disregarded and squandered (He gave it anyway, but no blade ever received a third chance to strike at the thrones of Narnia, and King Edmund was not known as the Merciful, but as the _Just_.) Peter said Edmund had always had that gift and from the way rueful way he said it, Peter was probably right.

Peter was usually right. Edmund studied Peter because Edmund knew order by heart, good by study and effort of will, and evil too dearly for comfort, but Peter knew evil only by the shadow cast where the light wasn't. Peter was like a book on Right and kingship. "Magnificent," Edmund would say, with his tongue laced with irony and his eyes reverent, because Edmund knew how to say, "I love you," to three people, and Peter wasn't one of them.

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Edmund was not afraid of kingship, but he was afraid of failing, of loving it too much, of turning back. So when he fell through the wardrobe into the past, the present, the future, Edmund was terrified, but he didn't look back. There were worse things to become than a pillar of salt.

Sincere and humble apologies are rare between ten year old boys, most of whom respond to chivalry with sarcasm or outright laughter. Edmund gave them anyway and reminded himself that patience, not anger, won allies at the negotiating table. Patience won trust. He'd laughed at Peter at once. (Peter wasn't the only one he'd laughed at.)

There wasn't time to pause or tremble as they navigated the tunnels of Aslan's How, not with a mutiny to deal with, but Edmund barely heard Nikabrik's scheme, his ears still ringing with the words, "Well done."

When Edmund was thirteen for the second time, Peter called a council of war. He would be seventeen in four months, and intended to join the Home Guard. Lucy's eyes shone, and Susan's lips turned white. Edmund began planning how he might pass for four years older until his brother took him aside after the meeting.

"I need you to defend the keep," said Peter.

"It's a detached house, not a castle, Magnificent. And you never do half so well without me at your back."

"No, I don't," Peter agreed. "That's where I'm putting you."

Edmund rolled his eyes, but no house in Finchley had a better defense plan. (The Home Guard was ordered to stand down a month before Peter's birthday, and Edmund breathed easier.)

"You've made it right, you know," Peter said once over a pint at the White Lion when he was twenty-two and Edmund was almost nineteen again. His white coat was flung over the back of his chair, and a stack of marked over law books sat between them. "Long since." It was the sort of thing he only said in his cups because Peter wasn't good with those words either. "He knows."

"He made it right," said Edmund. "The rest-" He smiled wryly. "-it's not a done thing. It's a doing thing."


	4. Peter

My Soul Can Reach

Chapter Four: Peter

"I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise."

~ _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ , XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When Peter Pevensie was ten years old and boarding a train for school, his father gave him his younger sister's hand and a copy of Rudyard Kipling's "If." Peter copied it out, memorized it and kept the book by his bed. He took it back to school with him and when the bombs started falling, he took it to the country. He didn't take it into the wardrobe, but by then he didn't need to.

Being the eldest wasn't the easiest thing. It was a bit, Peter thought, like walking with crowds in Kipling's poem. One was expected to lead, but only so far, because parents would return soon, siblings were still equals and rarely ever cared to be led (though they always expected one to _know_ ), and if he ever lost hold of that hand in his, he might be forgiven, but never by himself.

When Peter first saw Cair Paravel, shining like a star on the eastern horizon, his breath caught. He would have knelt in awe, except that he'd already seen greater. _I show you this because you are the eldest and will be high king over the others._ Being high king was a lot like being the eldest. It meant taking care of what was not his as if it was, taking a great deal of complaint as he did so, and giving everything back when called on. Until the memories faded, Peter was the only one who never questioned that they might go back (Or go on. Kings did not live longer than ordinary men, after all, and often quite the opposite.). A king held more hands in his than a brother.

Peter was a warrior. He led troops in battle and lost, even when he won, because it was a rare day on which an army returned without a single soul fallen. Victory was a thing to be cherished with mead and song, with thanks to the One who made it possible, and honor to those who would not see what they had preserved. There were many songs written about the high king, but Peter allowed them to be sung only when credit was given where it was due.

Magnificent was a word for the overenthusiastic. It bespoke grandeur, but only bards and children saw grandeur in a battlefield. Peter saw only honor and duty, the swift arrow, the sharp tooth, and the arm seconding his. He saw the bright hearths and quiet woods and raised his sword to keep them undisturbed. Children deserved the naiveté of safety, thought Peter who had been innocent, but never naive.

Peter expected to go back or go on, but he expected to leave someone behind to the take the reins. The floorboards of the spare room were fragile and weak under Peter's feet or perhaps it was his legs that were unsteady, but he pushed himself up anyway. "Well, we're back."

It was the high king's responsibility to say what others couldn't.

Being the eldest was a lot like being high king. Siblings, like subjects, needed protecting and often don't realize it. They needed an example even more, and so the eldest could not grow impatient (he'd learned the dangers of that) or give into the temptation to complain about unfairness (It was not that he never asked why, but that the answer was always in front of him).

The Old Narnians would have followed their high king returned into the mouth of an abyss, and leading them was like mounting a familiar steed again for the first time after a long illness. " _We haven't come to take your place, you know, but to put you in it,"_ Peter said because the Narnians needed to hear it, and so did Caspian, and because once the promise was made he knew he would keep it.

Caspian was as young and uninitiated as Peter once was. He had no brothers or sisters, but he did have years of training in battle and statecraft-just enough to befit a prince, but never so much as to threaten a king (one of Miraz's many misjudgments). It was not Peter's crown he gave to Caspian- _Under us and the high king-_ but it felt that way.

 _Bear it well, son of Adam._

Professor Kirke was a good teacher, of both philosophy and life, and he had tutored students for the university admissions before. Peter put his mind to his work and wrote advice to Susan in America and commiseration to Edmund and Lucy in Cambridge. When three overflowing letters arrived from the latter, he wished he'd thought to send word to Caspian, just in case. Letters were sparse from Susan, but that could be blamed on German U-boats.

When Peter was old enough, at last, to fight again, the war in England was over. "There will be another one," said his fellows, nodding sagely. Peter, who knew how true it was, said nothing.

He said nothing again, when Susan first excused herself from meeting with the others. Saying nothing became harder as one excuse became many. Magnificence was just a word, but they were Gentle and Just and Valiant, and Peter had no more battles to fight except to keep them so.

Being right was not always enough, and quarreling had never succeeded in keeping that hand in his. Edmund all but named it a betrayal when Peter finally called a retreat. "You never gave up on _me._ "

He tried to explain that it wasn't giving up. _I wasn't the one who brought you back._ A king knew when a battle was out of his hands.

He was twenty-one and bent over his medical books in the Professor's study, when he overheard Jill in the garden outside. "It seems a bit unfair," she said. "what if Edmund had been older or Lucy?"

"That would have been a right disaster," said Eustace who was less of a trial, but as blunt as ever, and had shared a room during long ago holidays with Peter and the old Edmund. "Er. No offense."

Edmund snorted. "It _would_ have been," he said. "But can you imagine it? Really?"

Jill's voice was thoughtful. "I suppose not."

"Peter is high king," said Lucy. "No one else could be."

Eavesdropping, even unintentionally, never felt right. Peter cleared his throat, and closed the window.

 _You are the eldest and will be high king._

It never crossed his mind that the one might have nothing to do with the other (" _Magnificent_ ," Edmund said long after. "Of course it didn't.").


	5. Lucy

My Soul Can Reach

Chapter Five: Lucy

"I love thee with a passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith."

~ _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ , XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Lucy Pevensie was born with her eyes open. She saw the shape of flower petals and the color of autumn leaves, the shine off the roof of a new automobile and worlds in the curling chimney smoke. She saw feasts in potatoes and powdered milk and grand adventures on the walk to the green grocer's. Lucy saw a royal crown in the kerchief her mother wore while dusting furniture and a virtuous lady and gallant knights in her sister and brothers as they headed off to school. She didn't see her father much, but kings need to ride out often to see to their domains, and so do news reporters.

Magic surprised Lucy, but only because it sought her out. She always knew it was there, and Lucy was rarely surprised to see what was really there. She was constantly surprised when others didn't. Those who couldn't see saddened Lucy, and those who wouldn't see wounded and angered her. She learned-after-to feel sorrow for both, and she sighed for Rabadash's incorrigible blindness, the stubbornness of siblings, the recalcitrance of a cousin, and the betrayal of a schoolfellow.

Seeing much means sorrow inevitably comes with joy because even the most loved disappoint occasionally. Seeing means responsibility, and Valiance, Lucy learned, was not merely fighting for a cause, but acting on one's knowledge ( _To whom much is given, much is required.)._

Lucy loved England because Lucy was incapable of merely liking anything, particularly the place she planted her feet and laid her head and saw her family each day. She chatted with her classmates about books and professors, and if she occasionally slipped and compared Shelley to a Calormene poet or criticized Henry Tudor's battle strategy, she was excused by most as 'an odd duck, but a darling, really.'

"I've known such lovely ducks!" Lucy would laugh in reply and save her sighs for letters to the boys and Jill and moments closeted with Susan.

"They don't know," she reminded herself constantly.

Lucy loved England, but she dreamed of Narnia, glittering seas and deep woods and pleasant valleys, stuffy crows and earthy dwarves and mysterious centaurs. She attended local dances with her feet light and when a young man offered to walk her home, she smiled cheerfully and chatted with him about books and work and politics while she waited for her sister.

"You're going to break that poor boy's heart," said Susan when she was twenty and Lucy was seventeen. "I don't think he was at all interested in Plato last night."

"As if I could," said Lucy because she had never been the beauty of the family and knew it. "He's a good friend, though. It wouldn't be right to pretend to something more if I didn't know I felt it."

"Even if it turns out you don't," said Susan. "It's not as if it's forever."

"Oughtn't it to be?" asked Lucy.

"Where you get these notions, dear!" laughed Susan who had taught Lucy about chivalry and courtship once upon a time.

"She _does_ know!" Lucy said later to the boys, home from university and medical school.

"Perhaps she doesn't anymore," said Peter looking much as he had when Lucy teased him about his first grey hair.

"She knows," said Edmund with quiet certainty. "Even if she doesn't remember she knows."

He looked as though he understood, and though she didn't want to, Lucy did too.

Loving much means sorrow is inevitable, and even understanding can be painful. Lucy remembered a long somber walk through the woods and the flash of torchlight off a knife.

There would be joy in the morning.


	6. Susan

A/N: This is by far the longest chapter and rather different from the others. For historical note: The Old White Lion (as mentioned in Peter's chapter) and St. Mary's-at-Finchley are actual places.

My Soul Can Reach

Chapter Six: Susan

"I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,"

~ _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ , XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Providence," the coroner had said in an awed tone, shaking his head.

"A miracle," murmured the vicar at St. Mary's-at-Finchley.

Father would have agreed with the coroner, and Mother with the vicar. Susan knew what the others would have called it. She didn't want to agree with them.

' _There are more things in heaven and earth,' Susan…_

The newspapers knew a tragedy and called it such without knowing the details, and Susan who _did_ know agreed, although sometimes she suspected the tragedy was not that they were gone, but that she was _still here_.

The miracle wasn't the train crash, of course, or the fact that everyone she loved or at least everyone who _mattered_ had been taken from her in one moment. It was the one, unstained item that had been recovered from the site-a pocket New Testament with Edmund's name inscribed on the flyleaf in his forward leaning script.

The book made Susan angry-it had no right surviving its owner-but it was all she _had_ of its owner, so she kept it in her purse anyway, and frowned at it whenever she went to retrieve her keys or compact. She was preparing for a meeting after work (just tea, as parties seemed unbearably _little_ these days) when a dusting of powder fell on the book's cover. She frowned and wiped it off, then wiped at the gilded pages as well. Her finger caught an uneven edge. Edmund had always been so _hard_ on his books, as careful as he tried to be. It was a wonder the gilding remained at all to stick to Susan's fingers. She was always having to tidy up after him when he was younger before-

"Well, I won't do it now!" she murmured, shoving it back down into her handbag.

A moment later, the thought that she would never again have to clean up one of her sibling's messes stopped Susan cold and sent her digging through the bag for the little book once more. She opened the book at the ragged edge and found the thin page it belonged to wrinkled and creased. She smoothed it out delicately, the translucent paper feeling foreign and familiar in ways she didn't care to think about, and then-

 _Susan._

It wasn't a voice in the empty room, but a name on the page, tucked into the margin in that same left-handed script with an arrow pointing to an underlined passage.

 _And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her._

"It's an often misread story," the vicar said when he stopped in for tea the next day. (So many people just stopped in these days to 'see how you're doing, dear' that Susan was thinking of moving.)

Susan was polite, even when she disagreed, but there was still a certain coolness to her voice when she answered. "It seems rather unfair, if-" she almost trembled in saying the word. "If it all happened that way. What if Martha had simply left the bread to bake itself and the room to sweep itself, chosen to enjoy herself and found-" Susan was respectful and the vicar was an elder, but Susan _-had once been a queen-_ could argue a point as long as Edmund used to and generally more patiently. "-found someone who would appreciate her more."

 _Like I did?_ Edmund had replied, dryly, when she'd said something similar about her refusal to join the others in their old nonsense.

 _You know it isn't nonsense. I lied to myself as much as the rest of you, but I always knew better. You're too intelligent for that Susan._

She hadn't spoken to him again before he left to go back to university.

The vicar didn't look scandalized. His smile was sad but knowing, reminiscent of Peter at his most insufferable. "I don't believe for a moment that the Savior did not appreciate Martha or even Martha's work."

 _What's the difference?_ Susan thought.

"...Or for that matter, Martha's love. Of course, she wanted to show her devotion."

"But it wasn't enough," escaped her lips despite herself. "No one's is. Isn't that what they say? Not even their-the younger sister's. Mary's." Susan assumed she was younger, as well as being clearly less responsible. The young could be forgiven irresponsibility.

The young could be forgiven anything. Susan was old. Older than twenty-one.

 _Well, you ought to be thirty-six now, oughtn't you?_ She imagined Lucy's voice. Lucy was always the most prone to flights of fancy.

"It wasn't the most needful," the vicar amended. "I rather think she did sit and listen eventually. If she hadn't, or if she'd left, what would have become of the rest of the story?"

Susan didn't quite have the nerve to admit that she didn't know the rest of the story, but she bade him good-bye and read the book, after all, all through the rest of the gospel of Luke without finding another mention of Martha, unless she was meant to be one of the nameless other women at the empty tomb.

 _A crack like a bomb had fallen behind them and an empty table and the morning sun paling in comparison to the owner of the voice…_

She didn't read further. She _couldn't_ read further, not when her eyes streamed. _If He could do that, if He cared so much, if He saved them once…_

###

Susan Pevensie had been sixteen when the war ended. It was a time to celebrate, and she had. No more air raids or rations, Father home for good this time, and not because of injury or for one speaking tour. No chance of having to watch Peter-or heaven forbid, Edmund!-go off to fight. (She'd seen them off so many times.) She'd known he was thinking of it, even before he called them the four of them together. Now neither he nor Edmund nor Eustace nor any of the other brothers and cousins and school friends she knew need consider taking up a rifle and killing or being killed. Now they could _live_.

She hadn't meant to forget the past, just to put it aside for awhile. This was the world they were born to, after all. This was the world they were meant for.

"But it isn't, Susan," Peter said gravely. "You know it isn't."

"You're rather hard at your books," she said lightly. "That certainly seems like putting down roots to me."

" _That_ doesn't," he said looking pointedly at the invitation she'd been trying to interest him in. "I wouldn't object to roots. He sent us back to live, not just flit over the surface."

The only part that mattered was that He'd sent them back.

She smiled brilliantly, as if the judgment didn't sting. "I'm _trying_ to live."

###

It ought to help to know what they had all thought of her: careful and troubled, frivolous and vain, treasonous, even, as Edmund had implied.

"Did you ever read the rest of the story?" the vicar asked on his next visit.

Susan's cheeks flushed as she realized he'd guessed at her ignorance. "I know the Easter story," she said coldly. _I was there._

"This came earlier." The vicar held out a hand. "May I?"

Almost reluctantly, Susan passed him the book. It still made her angry; it still hurt to read, but she didn't want to give it up.

He turned past the point where she'd stopped reading, past the women at the tomb and the men on the Emmaus road into the gospel of John.

"Chapter eleven," he said, handing it back to her.

There, once again, in Edmund's distinctive handwriting was her name, this time linked to a much longer passage. "And Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus."

She hadn't realized that Martha was Lazarus's sister. It almost hurt more. "I don't think anyone is going to bring my family back from the dead," she said, opening the door for him.

"Not now, perhaps," she heard through her fury as she closed it behind him. "Not here."

###

Once, after an argument with Edmund about her leaving for a party instead of coming along to celebrate Jill's victory in an archery competition, he'd tossed after her, "And to think they called you 'the Gentle.'" Her escort had overheard and expressed similar surprise later that evening, averring that no one so stubborn could be suited to the epithet.

"I'm a queen," she'd laughed lightly. "Of course, I'm stubborn."

He'd laughed, as well, because men could rarely stay angry at Susan for long _-and when they did, there was Edmund-and Peter-_ and said ruefully, "That you are."

###

In Edmund's defense, Susan admitted eventually, he most likely hadn't known he was going to die so soon after penning those notes. Edmund wrote in all his books from law textbooks to _Sherlock Holmes_ to this. He'd thought her a traitor- _Edmund's judgments were generally right-_ but he hadn't meant to wound her that deeply.

Perhaps he wasn't the only one who hadn't meant to hurt her.

 _He must have known it would. He always knew._

###

"I've thought since," the Professor had said once of his part in the old game. "He knew then what my deed would bring him to and still forgave it."

"Oh Professor, you mustn't think that way!" Lucy had exclaimed.

"He knew before I was born," Edmund had murmured, but his expression had not been brooding, only thoughtful.

Susan-she had still been playing her part then-had put one hand on her younger brother's and one on the old wrinkled one. "If He knew all that _then,_ He surely knew what would come after: the apple tree reborn as the wardrobe, the penitent who became the Just king."

"And He knows ours 'afters,' still!" said Lucy. "What a lovely thought, Su! I wonder what they'll be."

"Don't we all," Peter had said. "I think a slice of cake ought to be included."

"The high king decrees it!" Edmund had teased, but his eyes had been on Susan, and the smile that barely touched his lips thanked without words. "This is why we needed you at every negotiating table," he said aloud. "To soothe the troubled waters."

She'd raised an arch eyebrow, "And to fluster the ambassadors until they forgot their demands."

###

Susan could still fluster a young (or not so young) man with a smile and a compliment and an attentive ear, but it was less praised. Perhaps because it had had value when she did it for her country, but not when she did it for herself. (It wasn't selfish. They were always pleased to have that smile turned on them, and London afforded few enough opportunities to feel like a queen.)

Panting adoration was not so attractive now without Peter to deplore her methods or Edmund to question her motives, Mother and Aunt Polly to sigh with disappointment or Jill and Eustace to complain about her interests.

Susan was well beyond her 'afters.' And even if she wasn't, what would she say?

" _Perhaps you won't have to say very much at all."_

###

She opened the book again in a cab on the way out of Finchley. The house had sold; there was nothing else left.

Careful and troubled, frivolous and vain, treacherous and faithless.

 _Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died._

Foolish, Susan told herself, to imagine a lion on the British railways, but if he _had_...

 _But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee._

He couldn't. He wouldn't. Would he? She'd begged for a miracle once before she'd even begun to know him. Or was it that she'd known him best then and only forgotten since?

Was it herself that she'd forgotten?

###

Jill had once asked Edmund-she was the only one so new and uninitiated in the lore of Narnia to ask-if he'd been frightened when he first met Aslan.

"Terrified," Edmund had replied before Susan could redirect the conversation. "It was the best and most horrifying moment of my life."

Perhaps Jill was not so uninitiated as all that because she'd seemed to understand. It was Aunt Polly, who'd asked, "Why?"

"Because he knew me."

###

 _I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?_

Careful and troubled, frivolous and vain, treacherous, but perhaps-

 _Yea, Lord._

-not quite faithless.


	7. Eustace

My Soul Can Reach

Chapter Seven: Eustace

"-I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!"

~ _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ , XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Eustace Scrubb did not grow up on fairy tales. In fact, he did not begin to read them until he was (by most measures) nearly too old for them. They weren't easy to find. Alberta and Harold considered such things to be 'dull and foolish, reinforcing antiquated stereotypes and violent behaviors,' and the Experiment House did not keep them in the library for similar reasons.

The Experiment House, thought Eustace, did not need any assistance in encouraging violent behavior. When he wrote Edmund with this observation, his cousin responded with a wry note that most schools didn't, along with a copy of _Le Morte d'Arthur_ and three pages in Edmund's own hand on the Narnian code of chivalry.

Edmund was a wealth of advice, not just on Narnia, but on what Eustace tended to think of as _the change_. Eustace had refrained from asking about Edmund's off-hand confession with what he considered great restraint, not only out of respect but because he'd found, reading back through his diary that looking back was a profoundly unpleasant experience once one had _seen_ and _known_. That didn't mean that it was always easy to recognize when a habitual remark was out of line, and the students at Experiment House were not as patient as most Narnians. Eustace was able to figure out easily enough not to be like Them, anymore, but it was determining what _to_ be that was difficult.

"You pick it up by watching, mostly," Edmund said. "And reading the right books. And He helps, you know. It's not just a one-time thing. You sort of start to get the _sense_ when He'd not like something."

Edmund was right about the books, and the _sense_ , as he'd put it. Eustace found himself passing on the same knowledge to Pole - Jill - the following term, even if he still hadn't learned to tell a story the right way round and forgot to mention about Aslan being a Lion (He was more than that, anyway). Eustace trusted Jill, even before he was entirely sure he _liked_ her, and he thought that might be part of what Edmund meant, as well, so he listened.

Maybe not listened _perfectly_ because Jill wasn't the only one to blame for missing the signs, but still, listened.

"You listened when it counted," said Jill on a visit to Finchley, and Peter had apparently agreed because the High King borrowed his younger brother's fencing foil and dubbed Eustace _Sir_ and Jill _Dame_ , and Susan and Lucy ceremonially girded the two of them with scarves from the hall closet. It seemed his boring cousin had grown taller than Eustace remembered since long ago holidays, or maybe it was that so many Narnian tales focused on the high king that it was as if the aura of magnificence clung to a broad-shouldered university student like a cloak, but Eustace bowed, and then cleared his throat and shrugged.

"Puddleglum saved the day. We mostly kept mucking things up."

"It usually feels that way," said Edmund, and Eustace, who may have kept his promise not to ask, but had still listened to a centaur recite the Coming of the Four during the journey back to Cair Paravel, supposed that the Just King would know.

Peter and Edmund had proceeded to enter into a spirited debate over the appropriateness of the Order of the Lion versus the Order of the Table for Narnia's newest knights, and Eustace laughed at his own fancy (but only a little).

"It will have to be you two," Peter said after the apparition disappeared and the subject of rings was broached. His voice was wistful, but his eyes were certain. "I wish we could tell you where you're needed or what you'll have to do, but it will work out."

"I don't expect _someone_ will tell us," said Eustace, "One way or another, we won't be left in the dark." He paused. "Well, unless we have to go underground again." He wasn't entirely certain why everyone but Jill laughed at this.

"I should hope not!" she said as they geared up for their next adventure.

Jill got him back as they waited at the train station. "No balancing on cliff edges this time," she promised.

"I should hope not!" said Eustace indignantly before he caught on and smiled. Friendly teasing was still a work in progress. "I daresay we'll try to avoid tunnels." He held out his hand to help her board. "My lady."


	8. Jill

A/N: A day later than I'd hoped, but the completion of this fic. Happy Easter!

My Soul Can Reach

Chapter Eight: Jill

"I shall but love thee better after death."

~ _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ , XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Jill Pole knew plenty about broken promises. She knew about being unwanted and unnecessary, too plain, too young, too useless to keep around. There had been no need for a third child, not with two all the way grown and married, and it wasn't that the Poles didn't love their youngest, but she hadn't been at all a part of their _plans_. The Experiment House was supposed to be the most modern of schools, but to Jill it was a place to be banished out of the way, like the shelf for the bust from Cousin Margaret that neither of her parents cared to look at, but couldn't give away for reasons of _diplomacy_.

Perhaps it wasn't fair, but sometimes it _felt_ that way, especially on holidays, sitting with Grandmother Mabel with her musty room and faded housedress, and listening to the old woman tell stories in her creaky, too loud voice, while her parents were busy with one to do or another.

After the shakeup at the Experiment House when the Head was promoted off to a board somewhere and several of Them were removed from school for excessive nerves, the House improved to more of an ordinary awful than the misery it had been. A few of Their hangers on remained, including one girl who had absolutely delighted in carrying tales to Pennyfeather and poking fun at Jill's skinniness. There was brief talk at home about finding another institution, that perhaps the school was a bit _too_ modern and experimental, but Eustace had urged her to insist on staying _("Well, ask, I mean, Pole. I suppose He wouldn't care for us making a fuss about it, but you're the only one who's been_ there. _The only one here, I mean, and I've got to have someone to talk to sometimes. Plus, you've got to meet the others.")_ Which wasn't quite flatteringly put, but Eustace would never be a flatterer, and Jill got the sense of it.

She approached her parents nervously, at first, but there was a bit of a draft and a scent that reminded her a bit of the wind that blew over the clifftops at the end of the world, and she remembered charging into the fray with Eustace and Caspian amid a mighty roar, and her back straightened. The Poles weren't too anxious to find another school if their daughter was content where she was, and Jill was glad to stay, but she thought she would have been all right if she'd had to leave. There were letters, after all.

And maybe she hadn't been necessary in Narnia, after all, causing Scrubb to fall off the cliff and not recognize his friend and fretting with fear of the dark, but she'd been _wanted_.

###

And not just by Eustace. After being informed of their adventure, Lucy Pevensie sent enthusiastic letters and Susan sent a warm ones, and they both invited Jill to visit during the Christmas holidays alongside Eustace, where they promptly insisted on a retelling of the quest to find Prince Rilian and a report on King Caspian's reign _("Because Eustace really doesn't know how to tell a story properly.")_

Eustace didn't, Jill had to agree, but he'd said enough about his cousins, and the Narnians had said more, so that the idea of being introduced to the kings and queens of old was rather intimidating. Her wariness lessened, however, at the first embrace of Lucy, who insisted on being best friends despite the three years between them and the smiles of Susan, who offered to help her freshen up after her journey and interspersed advice on archery with hair maintenance like the older sister Jill had always wished for from the one she rarely saw. The nervousness returned a bit when the young men arrived home from school, but vanished entirely as the blunted blade touched her shoulders in token of approbation. High King Peter managed to be jolly and solemn at the same time, and King Edmund sharp and bracing, and the whole atmosphere of the crowded little house was that of a fierce, dangerous joy that put Jill in mind of those same cliffs.

"You never know," Lucy said of when they would go back. So Jill took to training. She learned archery in school and won a prize thanks to Susan's tutelage. She joined the Guides to learn woodcraft, and was flushed with pride when Peter said she was the best of them

Susan's archery lessons were some of the last contributions of the Gentle Queen, as the older girl became busier and busier with other things. Jill missed the warmth that had welcomed her to Finchley when an invitation to a shooting competition _(though nothing like you had back in Narnia)_ was rebuffed. "I'm sure you'll do very well, dear, but I must keep this engagement."

For a few moments, Jill was back to being unwanted and unnecessary again until Lucy and Eustace's indignation on her behalf warmed her.

When she found a younger Guide crying because her bow string had snapped her fingers, Jill passed on Susan's advice. Probably some part of the Gentle would appreciate it someday, and perhaps He would, as well. It felt good.

###

Jill and Eustace were the only ones who could go. Boarding the train, she almost felt worthy of Dame Jill of the Noble Order of the Table (Edmund had won an argument Jill only half understood back in Finchley).

After Puzzle's rescue-Jill refused to call it a capture-Eustace agreed, but by that time she was too focused on comforting the sweet thing. Jill knew what it was to make a muddle of things, and it seemed only fair to offer the poor, confused Donkey a second chance.

She tried not to think much on the march to Stable Hill with the others. Talk of old Narnian tales and the beautiful scenery kept her mouth occupied, but her mind kept returning to dear old Puddleglum (How long did Marshwiggles live, anyway?)

 _I'm going to live as much like a Narnian as I can, even if there isn't any Narnia._

She kept the words in mind as she saw the horses fall and then Eustace. Eyes wet (but bowstring dry), she didn't see the ambush coming until her bow was knocked from her hands, and she was dragged past the torches towards the darkness of the stable door.

 _...live or die, Aslan will be our good Lord..._

And then she was through.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light.


End file.
